Three Ways
by DagonSt
Summary: Snippet: three ways James Norrington did not recover from the events of AWE.


**- 1 -**

Captain William Turner has found neither heaven nor hell in his travels, only that blank, bleak shore onto which all his charges depart.

Admiral Norrington died saving Elizabeth, she'd said, but who's to say whether it was heroism, suicide, or... that, again. The crew won't - they've sewn up their memories of Jones and pitched them overboard. And the Captain cannot burden them with the worries of a man who can't know what his wife is doing.

So he stands in a dinghy, almost overbalancing in the waves, pushing off the sand with an oar, and shouts. Never an answer.

Will trusts Elizabeth to be faithful, no question. Haring off to salve her guilt over a man she got killed, that's another thing.

There is no map to the realms of the dead. There is the land and there is the ocean, and they meet in a line as straight and strict as that between sea and sky.

So he stays as long as he dares, tacks up and down a coast that needs no map, but Elizabeth keeps rendezvous on the right side of the ocean, and none find a way back to his ship.

**- 2 -**

Elizabeth Turner leaves young Will safe at home when she goes to the home of the sea-witch. Pirate tales she devoured, and some pirate tales were true, and so might the stories of firstborns and child-devouring witches be.

Tia Dalma's hut nestles in a swamp, an unforgettable spectacle of life within decay. The trees dripped moss like the Pearl's sails under moonlight, giving an impression of fog even at noon.

And of course, the mosquitoes. One could feel the fever had already begun, easing its way in with every breath.

The journey was necessary even with Kalypso free - the sacrifice of time, and this place - that had surely become some shrine, some temple...

He was a fine man, James Norrington, and Elizabeth can be happy as the pirates' queen but not as a ruiner of good men. This world needs more. And young Will can walk and talk and _talk_, and she has been too long from the sea.

The swamp was ruined, gaping holes in the canopy and smelling of clean salt where some vicious new tide pressed against the river. The tall trees turned to skeletons - one drowned, branches clutching at the boat's bottom.

Of the house she found no trace, and took that for her answer.

**- 3 -**

The trouble was, nothing to do with it. Possessing a full bottle of the Water of Life (well, three-fourths water and one of rum) gives a man a certain prestige, and it does something uncanny to candlelight, convincingly eerie when he pulls it out to prove the story about the swamps and the spooks. It would have been a true find had he been in any need of resurrecting. Which, despite ex-Captain Hector Barbossa's best shot (probably his best), he is not.

But Captain Jack had the prize and the Pearl, and plenty of rum, and in short everything he could want. Except some way to know what his magic potion will do.

Because skeletal was only fun once, and what had happened to those Spaniards... No, it'd have to be tested before Captain Jack Sparrow had need of it himself. A year's quest (and never mind the boat and Barbossa) made the stuff too precious to waste on some Tortuga rum-pot who'd walked down a wrong alley. A good ship, that was all that sort needed.

It wanted someone deserving. Money buys a lot of deserts, in Jack's opinion, but that sort doesn't believe in spooks and glows and wants assurances - a demonstration - before purchase. That left people he liked who were dying, and people he'd liked who were dead.

And Lizzie was fine, and Will.... well. And you couldn't trust Barbossa to be dead long, come to that.

There was Norrington. Indisputably dead Norrington, solid Norrington, who wouldn't double-cross... well. Who wouldn't have anything to double-cross him for, would he? Permanently relieved of duty. Norrington the pirate-hunter, just the thing to wind up and point at Hector Barbossa.

Done, then. All he had to do was find the body, fish it out, dampen it a bit, and... well, maybe a bonfire, in case those Spaniards were representative after all. But the corpse, first.

The compass swung lazily. Jack shook it, tilted it to the deck - a safe bet at least the man had gone _down_.

The needle made the full circle, stopped pointing at his own nose. Could the thing sulk? It could be stubborn. He could be wrong. Jack stared. "Fine!" he exploded. "Gold! Big enormous heaps of it! Enough to swim in!" The wretched thing swung obligingly north.


End file.
